The World of an Amateur Ne’er-Do-Well

He’s tall, but not too tall. Rotund, but not too large. His hair is a bit too long to be clean cut, too short to be fashionable. Clothes two sizes too large fit his frame like a gunny sack. The entire world is filled with dreams of something greater, but lacks the drive for more. It doesn’t fit well with his ambition.

That phrase (and its adjoining concepts) just got stuck in my head and all I could think of was one thing:

He would make the worst customer service agent ever.

You have to understand that this image I have in my head is someone who aspires to work for the likes of every Bond villain ever. They are his Michael Jordan, his Stan Lee, his Miley Cyrus—though some would argue that she’s a force for evil regardless. But he can’t meet them—he lacks the imagination required—and is stuck at his day job. So his desire for all the bad things in the world stays a hobby and nothing more. He fits it into his life as much as he can, but he’s handicapped by the do-gooders of the world. It took years, but he finally met more of his kind.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

These are the things that run through your mind when you work with the public like I do. I won’t tell you where I work, but if you were insulted at a store, bank, or circus, it was probably me.

I digress. These thoughts surround the basic concept of the amateur ne’er-do-well; that being an idea that I just liked how it sounded. For someone to be described that way, what would his world be like? How would he react to it? His dreams, how would he shape them? There are more questions that I haven’t even begun to answer. That’s the beauty of it all. There’s more to come. Always more to come.

Odds are you are aware that I’m a writer by now. And now you know how (some of) my characters are created. At least the more “unique” ones seem to be developed this way. These weird connections pop-up in my head when exploring sights and sounds. Mouthing the words and turning them over on my tongue. I honestly don’t know why I do it that way, but it works.

My entire life I’ve done it and I’m not about to stop now.

How do all of you picture this amateur ne’er-do-well? The same as me? What’s different?